Sergei Lukyanenko ostensibly drew his Watches series to a conclusion with Last Watch, but almost six years later he released a fifth book. New Watch is a very different kind of novel than its predecessors. It draws inspiration from other contemporary and urban fantasies, most notably the Harry Potter series. There is a greater emphasis on the mechanics of the world’s magic system, answering some questions from previous novels, but shifting the tone of the series away from the cerebral contemplation of the battle between good and evil, towards a more action-oriented adventure. Some of Lukyanenko’s trademark musings remain, but New Watch is clearly written for a slightly different, more global audience than the rest of the pentalogy.

So, I spent a really unreasonable amount of time waiting for and then looking for the Harper paperback release of Last Watch. I waited so long that the fifth book in the series was published stateside and my copy actually started to gather dust on my shelf. Eventually I contacted Harper Collins which prompted a very curt autoreply informing me that they didn’t have the publication rights. Although the Random House imprint they directed me to doesn’t seem to have the U.S. rights either, so…

Last Watch is the conclusion of all the storylines explored by The Watches books so far. Mysteries are solved, questions are answered, and actions are (somewhat) justified. The stakes are higher than ever, with friends pitted against each other and alliances formed from the most unlikely combinations. Through it all, Lukyanenko maintains his cerebral approach to storytelling, blending action, tension and philosophical exploration almost seamlessly and reminding us that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are rarely the simple constructs we assume them to be.